David Lee Roth’s Stalker Sounds About As Crazy As, Well, David Lee Roth
Stalkers are no joke. I know at least two people who have been followed and tormented by obsessive “fans,” and it sounds scary as fuck. Then again, it’s hard to take it AS seriously when the person being stalked is a massive rock star with the world’s resources at his fingertips who has experience with dealing with obsessive fans.
Which is why, though I sympathize with David Lee Roth, I also find his stalker story a little ridiculous. Roth posted on his personal website about his experience, and while it starts off sounding scary, Roth’s post eventually makes it hard to sympathize with him.
Let’s take a look at Dave’s post, or at least at the notable moments. You can read the whole thing here.
First off, it opens with this image:
Sooo, apparently Dave thinks his stalker is a woman out of a Scorpions video? This is a pretty dramatic way to illustrate a stalker, like he’s Thomas Crown or something. Your average stalker is usually a lot sweatier, and knows it’s hard to enter a phone number on an iPhone while wearing a designer leather glove. Or is that Dave’s hand? Is he scared his phone will infect him?
Anyway, on to the post itself:
“Help! I have a stalker. A very real one. 75 stalker phone calls in the last four months. All of them at 5:30-6:00 in the morning. All 917 and 301 area codes. Every now and then at 2 in the afternoon. Never on the weekend.
“The phone calls show up on my old phone but they don’t show up on the phone bill.
“Somebody knows a little bit about tech. They even know how to remove the number out of my phone when they want to.
Woah! This sounds creepy. Diamond Dave better look out for himself.
“This is not the first time I’ve bought the land and gotten some of the unhappy Indians.”
…ugh. Maybe use ANY OTHER TERM next time, Dave.
“These stalker calls come under the heading of ‘Domestic Terrorism.’”
Hooookay. While I agree that stalkers are creepy and terrifying, they are not ‘domestic terrorists.’ They aren’t threatening the lives of multiple people or uprooting the fabric of America. Don’t be a drama queen.
“As it was explained to me by the professionals, these calls are designed to make you terrified, nervous, afraid, upset and ruin your day, which is exactly what happened to me during my first stalker experience in 1977. I went through the phases of anger, fear, denial, etc.”
a) Ruining your day is not terrorism. b) Wait, you’ve dealt with this before? How can this be such a mystery to you? Surely you must know some people who can help you out in this situation. Or you could get a new phone.
“Van Halen was instantly successful. We sold 10 million records in weeks. With that success comes trolls and more.”
Way to plug the band, Dave.
“I’ve always supported trolling on the Internet. You know that. It’s one of my favorite parts. If I was more digitally literate, I would be a critic as well.”
Way to really shit on whatever sympathy I might have had for you, Dave.
“Having been through the stalker experience one time curiously made the second time even worse. I was more afraid and more intimidated the second time around. It really threw me off in the way where you stop eating or you eat too much and you sleep all the time. I’ve also experienced stalker calls from groups of people.
“There was a biker group in Florida while we were recording out of Gloria Estefan’s studio (highly recommend it). They got up to 40 calls and started physically following me around. Somebody tried to kidnap my father at gunpoint too. That’s an extreme version of bad news looking to ruin your day. Perhaps these scenarios are a bit more familiar to me than others.”
Woah! A fucking biker gang tried to kidnap your father? Dude, that’s insane — but how do you not have an ironclad way to deal with this kind of thing now? You’re a massive rock star, presumably with a bunch of money. If someone threatened to kidnap and kill my father, I’d have private detectives and the FBI on speed-dial. I definitely wouldn’t be writing lengthy blog posts about it!
“You think that was dramatic? Wait until that same person sneaks into your home and slaps your little girl awake. I don’t care if she’s days old much less months old. All that it’s going to take is four of those calls and she is going to fear the morning much less the phone. ‘Mommy, Mommy why is that call happening?’ She’s going to stop eating, start oversleeping and begin disassociating with people — that’s the entire purpose and why this is a violent felony and assault.”
If that happened, I would reign Hell down on this person. I would fuck their life up in any way I could. I certainly wouldn’t blog extensively about it.
After ranting about the possibility of having a heart attack after a phone call, Dave ends with the following:
“You better be careful. I’m a stranger and look what they did to me. You’re family, you’re familiar. He’ll turn on you with the exact same teeth and the exact same rationalizations they may have used to come after me. 9 times out of 10, I’m told, you get a shot of tequila or espresso in the belly of whoever is dialing that phone they’ll tell you, ‘I don’t know. I’ve always hated the guy’ or ‘I don’t know he went somewhere I wanted to visit and I didn’t go so I thought I’d fuck him up.’ Usually that’s all this is but there’s somebody out there who knows who’s doing this. Give me a call…”
Not sure what any of this means. Definitely don’t think anyone’s ever gone on an espresso-fueled stalking spree, though. Was that John Hinckley’s thing? Fine coffee?
Anyway, look, all joking aside, we hope the creep stalking Dave backs off and/or gets caught. Dave should report him to as many authorities as possible and maybe his manager. Unless he’s worried about pissing off more… Indians? God, what a stupid thing to write.
[via]
